Robert Amsterdam

There's been no shortage of criticism of the TIME selection - this one is from a column in the San Antonio Express News: So here's some criticism based on Stengel's own standard. If you define "powerful" as having at your disposal the economic, military, police — secret and otherwise — and media forces of an increasingly autocratic nation, then Putin's your man. If using that immense power to throw your opponents in jail as your critics perish under the most extraordinary circumstances amounts to bold, earth-changing leadership, then Putin has it in spades.